Recently in Open Document Formats Category

To support our research and analysis, Scott Liewehr and I have been working on a capability model to define how we look at Web Engagement that you’ll see coming through our work over the coming months and I thought I’d give a bit of a preview here. 

As I have discussed previously (in this post) there is more to this Web Engagement thing than Web Content Management, although the lines are blurry as there are a myriad of vendors that can claim capabilities here. Some of this great stuff is coming from WCM vendors, analytics vendors and some very nice niche players that we think our clients should look at as they build out their engagement strategy.

Note – I am using the term 'engagement', not 'experience' - in my opinion the experience is a vital element of engagement, but it’s not the broader topic – maybe more on that in a later post.  

Clearly, if you are a digital marketer, this can look confusing and I know of at least one organization that has deployed three different web analytics packages as each fulfills a different engagement function. Our intention is that as we delve into this engagement tier, we can start to unravel who exactly does what.   

We are also seeing campaign management and digital marketing requirements entering the WCM selection process, often disconnected from a wider strategy. I am not suggesting that having digital marketing requirement in a WCM RFP is necessarily bad – we just need to go into this with our eyes open and get some clarity over how we structure those requirements. 

Our concern is that we learn the lessons of ECM and big IT and stay alert to the risk of implementing a system that ticks a lot of RFP boxes, does lots of things OK, but nothing really very well or that we take our eye off the ball of the innovation in this space. In either case the engagement capabilities of an organization could become constrained.

We will be coming out with some pretty graphics, but here I want to discuss the five main pillars that Scott and I are putting together by which an organization can judge their web engagement strategy and capabilities:

1. Content Management – Yes, content management, not web content management. This is the capability of an organization to manage and publish different kinds of assets to multiple visitor touch points. Not necessarily one system, but a joined up integrated process combining the disciplines of managing localization, governance, multiple sites, digital assets, publish to email etc.   
2. Social Media - Not just about an organizations presence on Youtube, Twitter or Facebook, but how that is leveraged and measured to form an integrated part of the audience experience. 
3. Visitor Insight – Are you just counting visitors? Having lots of visitors may just mean they like pictures of funny kittens; having well understood engaged visitors is a business asset. Do you know who are your most valuable and engaged visitors? 
4. Integrated Campaign Management – In most organizations our websites are part of a greater digital communications machine and our audiences view us a single entity across multiple touch points. This capability is about how each of our digital marketing moving parts work together. 
5. Organizational Preparedness – The discipline of customer engagement spans various parts of an organization that have often been traditionally in separate silos. From customer services, to the database marketing guys to the cool guys in the black rimmed glasses in the agency – your capability to engage relies on how joined up are these folks in delivering this multi-channel brand experience. 

Remember this is a capability assessment, not a vendor maturity model or a magic err.. anything. It’s a way for people to think about implementing Web Engagement and the areas that may need focus.

We’ll no doubt tinker with the names as we start to publish more on this, but hopefully this can give you a taste of our thinking here. 

The state of Massachusetts has approved Microsoft's Open XML format for state documents. Some of you may remember there was quite a fight over the state's decision to adopt the OASIS ODF (Open Document Format) backed by Sun and IBM a couple of years ago. The decision excluded XML output from Microsoft because they controlled it. We covered much of the controversy here, and in our conferences where we hosted a few debates. Our opinion hasn't changed. Here is a statement from the State's IT Division website on their official position:

The Commonwealth continues on its path toward open, XML-based document formats without reflecting a vendor or commercial bias in ETRM v4.0. Many of the comments we received identify concerns regarding the Open XML specification. We believe that these concerns, as with those regarding ODF, are appropriately handled through the standards setting process, and we expect both standards to evolve and improve. Moreover, we believe that the impact of any legitimate concerns raised about either standard is outweighed substantially by the benefits of moving toward open, XML-based document format standards. Therefore, we will be moving forward to include both ODF and Open XML as acceptable document formats.

As our readers know, we are long-time advocates of open-document formats. Over the past couple of years, we have written a great deal about DITA and formats like ODF, but we also have a lot of experience and interest in DocBook and vertical DTDs such as J2008 for the automotive industry and the various DOD standards. We are clearly reaching a point where interoperability among these standards has become an issue. Organizations are more diverse, more likely to be sharing content between operating groups and with other organizations, and more likely to be sourcing content from a variety of partners, customers, and suppliers. Needless to say, not all of these sources of content will be using the same XML vocabulary; indeed, even two organizations using DITA, for example, will likely have specialized DITA differently.

With this need for interoperability in mind, OASIS has announced a new discussion list, regarding a possible new OASIS Document Standards Interoperability Technical Committee (TC). Details on the list, including how to subscribe, can be found here.

The last time I posted on this topic I claimed the controversy over the two applications was no longer interesting. Unless you have to deal with standards organizations' politics this is still true. However this does not mean that there are not good reasons to keep up with developments of new tools and new (governmental) decisions on adoption of one of the two applications. (Note the use of 'applications' is deliberate and correct both from a standards perspective since both ODF and Open XML are 'XML applications', and from a product point of view since a decision to use one or the other is, from a practical point of view, a product decision). All our coverage with links to most other historical coverage is here.

For recent updates see:

- An interview with Microsoft's Tom Robertson, by Mary Jo Foley

- Comments from Microsoft's Brian Jones, and a podcast of a conversation between Brian and Jon Udell

- Comments from Novell's Jeff Jaffe's blog, and

- The latest features of ODF from OASIS.

Writing for eWeek, Peter Galli brings us up to date on Massachusetts' support for ODF.

I could have sworn they already announced this, but in any case it was inevitable. The whole controversy is now simply not all that interesting. IT organizations need to understand the translation issues, but choosing one format over another is just not that big a deal. Many organizations have more complex issues to deal with, like integrating XML content from custom applications or other enterprise apps that don't map to either ODF or Open XML directly. We have lots more background on this.

David Berlind continues his excellent coverage of the less-exciting-than-it-used-to-be controversy over the now ISO standard OASIS ODF vs the soon-to-be-ECMA-and-then-ISO Microsoft Open XML standard. David also reports on a suspicously timed appearance of a reverse engineered plug-in for Microsoft Office that converts Office files to ODF.

Ed Dodds points us to a short but useful management-level writeup of OpenDocument vs. Office Open XML in Baseline magazine. By the way, if you don't know Ed's blog, Conmergence and you are interested in the broad application of XML to IT infrastucture, it is well worth bookmarking or adding to your RSS reader.

Via Scott Abel, we learned about the formation of the OpenDocument Format Alliance. I went straight to the "about" page, which provides the current list of members. The right concentration of UnMicrosoft vendors are there--Sun, Novell, IBM, Corel, and RedHat. But there are a few interesting members, including the American Library Association and the Massachusetts High Technology Council (and yes, if you go to their Web page, that is indeed the unlikely romantic pairing of Ted Kennedy and Mitt Romney chuckling in the picture on the upper left). The Mass High Tech Council caught my eye because they are a famously pro-growth organization that might not always get behind this kind of initiative. Perhaps they have suddenly realized that standards are good for growth? Or perhaps there are enough Massachusetts High Tech companies with an interest in ODF? Novell's headquarters is in Massachusetts now, but they are not a member of the Council. But Sun has a big campus here, and they are a member. So that might explain it.

Scott's article has a good roundup of related news coverage.

Bob Doyle at CMSReview has once again generously devoted his time and resources to record and produce one of the events at our recent Boston conference. David Berlind from ZDNet, who has tracked the controversial Massachusetts decision to standardize on OASIS's ODF on Between the Lines (a blog you should subscribe to) in more detail than anyone, interviewed lobbyist Morgan Reed from the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) before a live audience at Gilbane Boston. ACT, who lobbies for small businesses, but also Microsoft, is against the Massachusetts decision - Morgan was gracious enough to submit to David's penetrating skepticism. Bob Doyle says he keeps this interview on his video iPod! Bob says you should use the QuickTime player. Here is the full interview, or you can choose chapters below:

Frank Gilbane - the Background    

The Debaters - Morgan Reed and David Berlind    

Lobbyist for Microsoft (MS) and Small ISVs    

How Much Money Spent Lobbying Open Formats?    

MS to Mass: Do you respect IP?    

MS Press Release: Mass ODF Plan has failed!    

By 2007 only ODF-compliant applications?    

Does Massachusetts have any leverage with OASIS?    

What if MS OpenOffice was chosen as standard?    

Do MS and Internet Explorer encourage non-standard HTML?